Switched
by Lady Shockbox
Summary: Anonymous fanfic request. It was the result of an experiment gone horribly, totally, and inexplicably wrong. And Shute and Captain are caught in the middle of it. Rated for sensitive subject material in later chapters.


Fuuuu… this fanfic is super-duper late. Like, by at least six months. I had a lot of things on my plate while I was trying to come up with a story to go along with the request (that individual who made the request wishes to remain anonymous, by the way), and it kept getting pushed and pushed back as school and home related issues came up and bit me on the ass. Nevertheless, six months gave me a lot of time to map out this story and I'm glad I waited. So without further delay, here's our first piece together. I actually meant to post this yesterday too, but I started my new job and ended up working from four to eight thirty at night. To say I was tired is an understatement. Be glad I don't own SD Gundam Force, guys. Seriously. Be _very_ glad. Kudos to anyone who can figure out the name references to the two scientists, too!

* * *

><p><strong>I took a walk around the world to ease my troubled mind<strong>

**I left my body laying somewhere in the sands of time**

**I watched the world float to the dark side of the moon**

**I feel there is nothing I can do**

_Kryptonite_ – 3 Doors Down

**i**

"What ─ the _fuck_ ─ did you _do?_"

That was a tone of voice that Wheately did not _ever_ want to hear, especially coming from one his superiors… and _particularly_ after one of his charged science labs exploded while he was overseeing the designated experiment within. _But things were going _so_ smoothly_, he lamented frustration gnawing on the corners of his brain, and things _had_ been going so smoothly. That probably should have been his first hint that something was going to go wrong. Things usually never went good for him anyways – at least not for long.

A GM finally came stumbling back into view carrying a compact fire extinguisher. The mech killed the rest of the flames rising from the burning hulk of now useless metal in the center of the sealed off science lab. As if to add insult to injury, the fire sprinklers _finally_ kicked in, soaking the still reeling scientists and scurrying GMs inside the sealed lab. Steam and black smoke rose away from the blackened metal of the once pristine generator that had been the pride and joy of Wheatley's hard work for nearly two years. Two years of hard work gone in a matter of seconds ─ destroyed without warning when the tesla coil semiconductor caught fire and caused the entire unit to explode. Wheatley wanted to sink into the floor and out of existence – to be anywhere but watching his hard work turn into nothing but scrap metal.

Johnson was also upset, but not for the loss of the generator. The hard faced blonde scientist was glaring daggers at Wheately through her blue rimmed spectacles. She was no longer ducking behind the console she dodged behind when the explosion originally went off, and the head of Blanc Base's main research facility was smoothing out her white lab coat. "Well, Dr. Wheately? I'm waiting."

Oh, how he _hated_ Dr. Caroline Johnson. Wheately fixed his spectacles and tried not to focus on the sensation of her eyes burning holes into his skin. If looks could kill, he probably would have died ten times over already. "I… I don't know. I must have miscalculated the voltage range that the tesla coil could handle."

"Indeed you did," Johnson said flatly. Her voice held an underlying sharpness to it that was very dangerous, and Wheately had to suppress a fearful shudder. "Let us get one thing straight, Dr. Wheately ─ you were not ready to perform this experiment. I don't know _how_ you convinced Chief Lyn to run this test, but now we have a locked out chamber full of several very scared scientists and GM units, all of whom are being exposed to a potentially dangerous amount of radiation from that blast. You could be very easily fired for this."

"Radiation is the least of our concerns," Wheately said meekly. "Given the nature of the device and the type of experiment we─"

"_You_."

"_I_ was trying to perform," Wheately corrected himself quickly, "We should make sure no one has any missing body parts, or organs… it might be a good idea to make sure no one is missing altogether."

Johnson was looking at him incredulously. "What are you trying to say, exactly? What _was_ this device supposed to do?"

"You didn't know?"

"I was only assigned to supervise the testing of this device − _not_ be one of your mindless lackeys analyzing it."

"It's a spacebridge generator, or rather it _was_. After the Dark Axis attack on Site D that destroyed Dr. Bell Wood's dimensional transport tower, we needed to create a new spacebridge generator in order to engender wormholes within the space-time continuum, except _this_ device was supposed to be the revamped edition."

"So it was designed to be more powerful than the first one," Dr. Johnson said dangerously. "The first generator was constructed barely within legal limits, Dr. Wheately. Are you telling me that your generator is an illegal build?"

"Not… necessarily," Wheately tried, except Johnson was right. His device _was_ illegal… or rather it was, up until it exploded. _Then again, the scientists I endangered could always sue me for this._

Johnson was pinching her temple between two taut fingers. "Are you trying to say to me that one of our scientists or GMs may have inexplicitly been warped into an alternate dimension?"

"Maybe," Wheately said dejectedly. His British accent sounded suddenly too thin for him. "In a perfect world, that would be the only thing to have gone wrong. The device was not ready to fully open wormholes yet ─ I was only trying to test the particle engine in order to make sure the device would fully run. The space bridge cortex ripper was nowhere _near_ being completely calibrated, and if the device _did_ malfunction before the detonation and try to create a spacebridge, a number of things could have gone wrong and happened instead… and perhaps even beyond the confines of the lab."

"Anyone could have been affected by this? _Neotopian civilians?_"

"N-n-_no_," Wheately stammered immediately. He held up his clipboard to involuntarily defend himself against the wrath of the elder scientist. "Neotopia City is well out of the physical range of the generator. However, anyone in Blanc _Base_ could have been affected by the detonation if the device tried and failed to open a space bridge, but the chances of that are slim. If anything, the people closest to the device would have been negatively affected, being the scientists in the test chamber."

"Let's get them out then," Johnson said. "Wheately?"

He flinched. "Yes?"

"If anyone is missing or seriously maimed because of your little toy, understand full well that we have every right to hand you over to law enforcement. Loosing your job will be the least of your problems."

**ii**

When Captain Gundam came to from recharge that morning, several things came to him as a shock.

For one, he was not in his own bedroom. He could tell because the lights were still out, and they should have immediately activated upon his reactivation. His recharge plate was hardwired to turn on the room's lighting as soon as his core consciousness was revived from a full night's rest, or when his energy levels read ninety-percent or higher upon waking up. In fact, he was not even sleeping on his own recharge plate ─ the surface underneath him was soft and plush. Captain only had a few spare blankets in his own room, but this bed had a full comforter and pillows.

_Shute must have had another nightmare again about Hana_, Captain thought.

It was a common occurrence, the Gundam sadly noted, that Shute was incredibly prone to nightmares. This was e_specially_ common after particularly perilous battles against the Dark Axis, just like the one they had the day before. Some of _those_ drawn out fights lasted well into the night, and Shute would always stay over at Blanc Base in one of the empty guest suites if that was the case. It would be too much trouble for the young boy to go home and face questioning from his parents that might expose the SDG's secret operation, so he would always call letting them know he was at a friend's house instead. His mother and father never questioned which friend he was visiting. Everyone in the SDG was thankful for their lenient obliviousness. Unfortunately, it was during times when he was visiting that Shute's nightmares became a problem. Captain suspected he had them at home as well, but Shute never disclosed to Captain exactly when they happened. Whenever he was at Blanc Base overnight and had those nightmares, he would quietly page Captain on a private radio frequency and ask if he would come down to his room. Captain always let him. He never asked questions unless Shute indicated he wanted to talk about his nightmares, but the Gundam would spend the rest of the night with his best friend regardless.

Except Shute was not with him this time, which led to the next thing that struck him as a shock ─ none of his processing equipment was working. He came to the realization that this was the case when he tried to scan for Shute. He could not detect his human companion's heat signature in the bed with him, and trying to continue those scans further gave him absolutely nothing in return. His visual computer feed was offline as well. Whereas his vision should have been filled with translucent data patches and information feeds, he was met only with blank darkness. Trying to run a self-diagnosis proved futile as well. Captain Gundam has no means of activating it. Was he malfunctioning? Did the blow he take from Zapper Zaku's heathawk in the last battle do more damage to his head than he initially realized? Where was Shute? Where was _he?_

"Computer, activate light terminal ─ seventy percent brightness," Captain commanded, except it was not his voice. He recognized the airy tone of his best friend anywhere, and Captain briefly wondered if it had been Shute speaking instead of him… and the more Captain thought about it, the less it made sense. No, that was _him_ talking, but it was Shute's voice that came out of his vocoder instead of his own. It was an alien sensation to be speaking with the voice of his friend, as well as entirely illogical beyond normal compare.

_"Voice patch not recognized," _the female AI responded over the room's speakers in a cold monotone. _"Please repeat the command or activate the lighting unit manually." _

An alien emotion began to rise into his chest that Captain Gundam was only vaguely familiar with, but he recognized it all the same ─ panic. Something was not right. Something was wrong. Captain loathed the feeling of not being able to analyze his surroundings and understand what was going on. It left him venerable and open to attack. There was no denying that he was a war machine designed specifically to fight ─ Kao Lyn insisted that he was perfectly useful for other things too, but Captain understood perfectly well that it was a pseudo comfort offered by his father ─ although his primary function remained dependent on defensive combat. Not being in a suitable position to defend himself was absolutely _maddening_. It went beyond programming and rooted itself in raw feral instincts beyond his encrypted training. He raised his hand to his forehead in a vain attempt to calm himself down.

Letting his fingers run through his hair.

That wasn't the only thing wrong, of course. Not by a long, _long_ shot. The texture of his hide was wrong as well, too soft and not enough metal. In fact, Captain couldn't feel _any_ metal. There was no Gundamium on him anywhere, which was incredibly disturbing because he was supposed to be _made_ of it. Panic was slowly replaced with horror as he drew his hand away from his face. Skin covered his digits and palm like a plague, pink and squishy, _mocking_ him.

Captain started screaming. It was the only reaction that seemed justified.

**iii**

It did not take him long to realize he had _somehow_ inexplicably become Shute. _Good thing that there had been a mirror_, Captain thought. Even in the darkness of Shute's borrowed bedroom ─ and it had been Shute's, Captain remembered saying goodnight to his best friend and leaving him in that same room the night before ─ the Gundam turned human could make out Shute's image in the mirror perfectly. Mused brown-red hair, ridiculous clothing, flushed skin… but there was something in the boy's face that Captain had never seen before. There was an intelligence in his eyes that Captain felt connected with, and the boy's posture was impeccably different as well ─ guarded and tense, not carefree. Captain would recognize that posture anywhere. It was his own.

It did not take him long to find out what happened to his body either, as well as what happened to Shute. Perhaps their fates were a bit _too_ intertwined.

Captain left Shute's room in search of his own, but before he could find it, he ran into himself… or rather his body. The shape of an all too familiar Gundam came barreling around the corner of the hallway and nearly barreled into him. Captain Gundam's face ─ or at least the face on the body he should have been in ─ was flushed from obvious overheating. The mech's chest rose and fell with hyperventilating breaths and his optics bugged at the sight of him. Even without the aid of his logic center, Captain was immediately able to deduct that the person currently piloting his body was Shute. He palmed the mech's shoulder and pushed him effortlessly against the nearest wall, reaching up with both hands to keep him pinned by the shoulders.

"Shute," he tried. He found it perplexing to be addressing his best friend with their own voice, nevertheless how _he_ was addressing his best friend inside _his_ body. "It's Captain Gundam."

"C-C-_Captain?_" The quality of the Gundam's wobbling voice clearly gave away that it really _was_ Shute. Despite how his human companion was using _his_ voice, Captain knew he would recognize his friend no matter how differently his voice sounded. The way he spoke ─ pitchy, warbling, carefree and so much _unlike_ Captain Gundam ─ was a dead giveaway. Faintly, Shute began to tremble in his switched body. The metal of his armor clanked loudly in the all too quiet hallway. "H-_how_…?"

"I don't know," Captain said. "Are you alright?"

"N-n-no." Shute shuddered hard just then. His knees clanked and threatened to give way under his weight. Captain could feel the amount of heat Shute was giving off and the Gundam realized that Shute was not venting his body correctly. Panic was never an emotion that Captain was ever used to even in his old mechanical body, but strong emotions usually caused overheating if too much processor power was used to create those reactions. It was partially the reason why Captain was rigorously trained to be so stoic. Emotions meant wasted energy. Wasted energy meant less energy that could be adequately applied on the battlefield. Not having enough energy to use on the battlefield meant lost fights, and Captain Gundam was not sure he wanted to even _consider_ imagining what would happen if they lost a battle to the Dark Axis. Failure was not an option, and Captain Gundam was useful only for fighting ─ no matter how Kao Lyn tried to express otherwise.

Pain shot up through Captain's hands and he snatched them away from his friend briefly. They were scalding hot and itching with burning iciness ─ the heat coming off from Shute's armor had burned him. "You need to calm down," Captain started out cautiously. "You're going to overheat."

"_How can I calm down!_" Shute practically screamed it, and to hear the unrestricted terror coming from his own borrowed vocoder was making Captain's head spin with confusion. If anything, Shute did have every right to panic. Whereas Captain no longer had access to his statistics reader or his onboard logistics center, Shute was probably being bombarded with more information than he could process now that he was in Captain's body. Captain watched with both perplexity and inward terror as Shute broke down and started to _cry_. In _his_ body. The human-turned-Gundam ducked his head and shuttered his eyes as cleaner fluid built up behind the lenses. "Last night everything was fine, and now I wake up this morning and I'm like _this!_"

"Everything will be alright," Captain said, although he was entirely unsure how that was actually going to happen. Physically, the situation they managed to get themselves tangled up in was physically impossible. How _had_ this happened? How _were_ they going to fix it?

_You won't_, a little voice taunted in the back of his head. Captain effectively shut it up by punching it in the face. It was better than nothing.

"Shute, please don't cry," Captain tried. "We'll figure this out. Kao Lyn or Bell Wood might have answers."

"Maybe," Shute sniffled miserably. He trembled very lightly again. "How am I supposed to go to school like this? What will my mom and dad say?"

"We'll think of something," Captain said. Gingerly, he touched Shute's shoulder and felt that the heated metal had cooled down somewhat. It was a start, at least. He carefully led his friend down the hallway toward the bridgeof Blanc Base. _At least, I _hope_ we can think of something._


End file.
